Clothes will Clean itself in Light: A New Innovation by Australian Scientists!

Clothes will Clean itself in Light: A New Innovation by Australian Scientists!

Can clothes clean themselves? Yes, soon clothes will clean themselves in the presence of light. The latest technological advance in Science will soon enable the clothes to clean themselves when exposed in direct sunlight or under a bulb. Nano structures grown on the clothes will help to clean the clothes all by themselves by decomposing the organic matter present in the clothes within six minutes. This is going to be yet another wonder of science.

The person behind this new innovation is Dr Rajesh Ramanathan from RMIT University of Melbourne. His team comprises of a group of researchers including Dipesh Kumar and Vipul Bansal from the same University.

According to Zee News, these researchers have developed a cheap and efficient way to grow special nanostructures, which can degrade organic matter when exposed to light, directly onto textiles.

The clothes already have a three dimensional structure which help them to absorb sunlight very fast. In the clothes nanostructures are grown, by dipping them in a solution. The nanostructures when exposed to light receives an advance energy creating “hot electrons”. Hot electrons liberate a fracture of energy that can degrade organic matter present in clothes. Thus this technology enables the textiles to remove stains and dirt when exposed to light with in minutes.

The challenge is that the researchers have to work very hard to extend this technology on an industrial scale.

Rajesh says, “There’s more work to do to before we can start throwing out our washing machines, but this advance lays a strong foundation for the future development of fully self-cleaning textiles.”

The process developed by the team had a variety of applications for catalysis-based industries such as agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and natural products, and could be easily scaled up to industrial levels, added Rajesh.

“Our next step will be to test our nano-enhanced textiles with organic compounds that could be more relevant to consumers, to see how quickly they can handle common stains like tomato sauce or wine,” said Rajesh.